At the end of World War II, nearly three million Jews were trapped inside the Soviet Union, unwanted by a repressive Stalinist state yet forbidden to leave. Telling the full and inspiring story of the international movement to free Soviet Jewry—which led to a mass exodus from the disintegrating USSR in 1989—Gal Beckerman also shows how it gave the American Jewish community a renewed sense of spiritual purpose and political muscle.

"Gal Beckerman has written the definitive account of what might be the most successful human rights campaign of our time. This is a wonderful book: The narrative is thrilling and propulsive; the writing is beautiful; and the research absolutely authoritative. The movement to free Soviet Jewry will be studied for years to come as a model of non-violent civil disobedience, and Gal Beckerman's book will be read years from now as the masterwork on the subject."—Jeffrey Goldberg